As bad as things looked back then, things are turning out even worse than I expected. Here's that column again. Read it and weep:

I am perhaps the most prominent defender of Jersey Shore locals. So it pains me to say this, but Reese Palley was right.

In the late 1970s, Palley was a somewhat eccentric art and antiques dealer who had a shop on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. He pushed a radical notion of how the city should develop: Palley wanted to turn the entire city into a tourist trap of Disneyesque proportions.

State and local officials had other ideas, however. They wanted to use the casinos to rescue the local population. That idea led directly to the spectacle I witnessed Sunday when I took a ride down to visit the newly opened Revel casino.

Revel is being marketed as a destination for the upscale crowd, the sort of tourist who might otherwise go to the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard. There's a big difference, though: To get to the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard, you don't have to drive through block after block of squalor.

That's what I saw as I followed the signs to "Revel Beach." One squat housing complex had a big sign that read, "No trespassing -- private property." There were beat-up old rowhouses and lots of guys on bicycles -- not the carbon-fiber racing bikes the tourists ride, but the rusty steel ones preferred by people who can't afford cars.

As for Revel itself, I was an opponent of the tax breaks that permitted the developer to finish the project. But I have to admit it looks great. A rotting old pier was removed from the oceanfront and the sandy beach is being restored. From the casino perched six floors above, the view of the beach is breathtaking.

But even in the heat of summer, Revel is failing to meet revenue projections. Analysts predict a cold winter. To find out why, I took a walk up the boards to chat with a guy who knows the A.C. scene as well as anyone. That's Frank Pileggi. He's the manager of the Irish Pub, a cozy little bar/hotel where any local would feel right at home.

Pileggi recalled working at a casino back when gambling was legalized in the 1970s. "The money came in so fast, they had to put it in trash bags," Pileggi told me.

The locals thought that would go on forever. Not Palley, Pileggi recalled.

"Reese Palley thought that Atlantic City should not have people living in it," he said. "He thought it should just be a city of businesses and the people should be moved out of the city."

That sort of talk nearly got Palley ridden out of town on a rail. But by 1998, no less a person than Brendan Byrne, the governor who pioneered gambling in A.C., was quoted in this paper as saying Palley "had the right concept: Make the island a resort and put the housing on the mainland."

All of this made me want to talk with Palley. But even back then, he was an old guy. I figured he'd be long gone by now.

He was -- to Key West. When I got the 91-year-old on the phone, he offered a nonstop string of last laughs.

"One of the expressions I got into a lot of trouble with is that what Atlantic City needs is a bulldozer six blocks wide," he told me. "Now, it needs a bulldozer 12 blocks wide."

That sort of thing got him accused of racism by the members of the African-American and Italian-American communities in the city, he recalled. But it's not a matter of race, he said.

"This is waterfront resort land, the scarcest land in America," he said. "To use it for housing was just insane. They could have built anything they wanted. They could have turned it into a dreamland."

He envisioned riding trails and golf courses where all the housing is. So what if the workers had to live off the island?

That's the way it is on Long Beach Island. And you never read about the latest plan to bail out Beach Haven.

It seems history has shown Palley to be a prophet without honor.

As for all those do-gooders who saw casino gambling as a social engineering project, their honor may be intact.